We had a great session last tonight with our monthly Walk together session in conjunction with Ramblers.

We had Kym & Daisy join us for their first sessions and they fit right in.

As usual we walked through Black Dam into Crabtree Plantation and while it was getting dark we were all in high spirits and it was great walking along and seeing everyone walking next to someone and chatting the whole time.

Our next Walk Together session is going to be the 18th of November and we have sessions every week between then and now.

Forgot to take the photo while Christine and Evelyn were there

We had a great session last night with Samantha back for her first session in a while! And Yazid providing his usual laughs while we collected 2 and a half bags of litter from central Basingstoke.

We were once again joined by Alan from Natural Basingstoke for a great session where we went out to Lyford which NB are trying to rewild.

This involved dead-heading the flowers from the Golden Rod plants which aren't native and try to take over areas. Always nice to be outside and there was plently of wildlife out and about.

It was a race against time, but it was a very good session led by Tazmin who was joined by a host of regulars in Sammi, Evelyn, Christine & Yazid

We changed it up last night and combined litter picking with creating a scarecrow for the Dashwood Manor scarecrow competition!

This was an opportunity to show off the great work that we do as a team so we wanted to emphases the litter picking we have done by accessorising with litter found on the day.

We split into two groups, Sammi who brought a lot of the materials for the scarecrow and Evelyn who brought all the newspaper to use as filling worked together to build the base of the scarecrow.

Meanwhile Christine who had come equipped with some great litter found throughout the week, Yazid, Tazmin and I went out litter picking to find litter to add. We were very successful finding lots of bottles, a belt, plenty of small bits and topped off with a purse!

Then we all came together and had the process of naming our gorgeous scarecrow, after some great suggestions we landed on Na-Trash-A. To end the night we ate the delicious brownies baked by Tazmin and Yazid had a little dance with Na-Trash-A.

Can't wait to win first prize tomorrow!

We had a really nice time yesterday joining BVA and Walk N Talk for a mental health walk.

Meeting at the War Memorial Park Christine for her first session with GoodGym beat us all there and was chatting with Jude from Walk N Talk when we arrived.

The purpose of the session was to get out and enjoy a walk while meeting some great people and some conversations about mental health. We got straight into it and I had a great conversation with Sammi & Dan from BVA about mental health, particularly after a long week of work. While Evelyn had a nice long conversation with Jude.

We then went down to Blackdam Pond where we must have seen every duck in Basingstoke!

Last night we had a small but effective team out clearing Eastrop Park!

Tazmin and I met at the Social club before walking towards Eastrop Park where we met Mohamed who was back for his third session in 3 weeks. We joined Sandra from the council to focus on the playground here.

We had looked after this same playground 6 months ago and it was nice giving it another revival as a lot of the tanbark had spread back into the main play area. Mohamed and Tazmin fully cleared this section while Sandra tidied everything.

In the mean time I was a wandering weeder making sure to clear nearly all weeds from the area.

At the end of the session I was once again amazed by how much we could get done in just over an hour!